http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE is now considering whether to initiate a second
criminal prosecution in a case being treated as a classic illustration of
the evils of "racial profiling" (at least by police experts such as Al
Sharpton). It began when more than four dozen black and Hispanic women told
the police they had been raped by a black man. Consequently, the police
thought they should look for a black man -- no doubt as a result of their
ignorant stereotyping.

Though the rapes began back in the David Dinkins administration, it
wasn't until 1997 that the police connected many of the rapes through DNA
tests. At the end of 1998, when sketches of the rapist failed to produce any
results, Mayor Giuliani announced a $10,000 reward for the rapist's
apprehension.

The rapist was not only prolific, but vicious. He often beat and robbed
his victims -- black and Hispanic women between the ages of 13 and 53. He
typically raped them at gunpoint, raping one woman in front of her young
daughter.

You might not have heard about those 51 victims of barbaric rapes in
predominantly black areas of New York City. There were no angry protests. No
marches on Fifth Avenue. No sensational specials on "Rivera Live" for two
weeks straight. Al Sharpton wasn't demanding that the federal government
intervene to bring this monster to justice. Indeed, the serial rapist might
have continued his savagery unmolested for another six years for all the
self-appointed neighborhood spokesmen cared.

But the cops cared, because that's their job.

So in February 1999, four white cops were looking for a rapist who posed
no danger to their wives, mothers, sisters and daughters; they didn't live
in the predominantly black areas that this rapist had chosen for his hunting
grounds. The cops were, it later turned out, less than a mile from where the
actual rapist lived.

As everyone in the universe now knows, the four cops patrolling the 43rd
Precinct tried to stop a couple of black men acting suspiciously and whom
they believed might be the rapist. The first man they stopped without
incident. But the second man they tried to stop, Amadou Diallo, ended up
dead.

According to the policemen's testimony -- believed by a jury that
included four black women -- Diallo didn't stop after the cops identified
themselves and asked him to stop. He turned away from them and then pulled
out what they thought was a gun. One of the cops shouted "Gun!" and began to
shoot. The policeman closest to Diallo fell backward off a step, leading his
partners to believe he had been shot by Diallo.

In April 1999, two months after that tragic mistake, the police finally
apprehended the rapist who had been terrorizing poor minority neighborhoods
for six years. They caught him trying to sell the jewelry of one of his
victims to a pawnbroker in the Bronx. A search of his car and home turned up
yet more stolen jewelry -- as well as a cache of firepower, including a 9 mm
MAC 11, a .380 semiautomatic pistol and a .22-caliber rifle.

Like Diallo, the real rapist was a black man living in a black
neighborhood who also had a job. He was a floor polisher for a midtown
Manhattan building maintenance company. You might not know that, since The
New York Times ran only one lonely article on the rapist's capture.

One article on the police's apprehension of the real rapist in April. But
The New York Times managed to find space for more than 700 articles on the
cops' miserable mistake in shooting the wrong man back in February.

The statistics suggest that, if anything, New York cops are gun-shy. The
police force in Washington, D.C. -- which is almost entirely black -- is
responsible for five times the number of civilian shootings per capita as
the New York City Police Department. Civilian shootings by the NYPD averaged
63 per year in the '70s. Last year the number was 11 -- one of whom happened
to be Amadou Diallo.

These cops have already been tried and acquitted for the Diallo shooting.
Now the woman responsible for Waco will decide whether they should be tried
again.